Everybody Hates Chris: Pilot
By: Mark Runyon | Category: Show Review | 09/24/05 | 11:54 PM
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Grade: A- | Genre: Comedy
Summary: Everybody Hates Chris is the Cosby Show from the other side of the tracks, complete with Wonder Years' awkwardness and inner monologue. Chris Rock shows us that only through suffering can you truly know what laughter really is.
I just finished watching The Longest Yard, and what a steaming pile of crap. Was there really a time Adam Sandler made A-grade comedies like Big Daddy and the Waterboy, or was that just my fruitful imagination in overdrive? Instead of rehashing the hundred and one ways that film blew, I thought we'd take a hard look at a man who hasn't lost his comic edge, Longest Yard co-star Chris Rock. Rock's latest comedy Everybody Hates Chris is debuting on the small screen and is the freshest, most funny comedy of the new season. Everybody Hates Chris is the Cosby Show from the other side of the tracks, complete with Wonder Years' awkwardness and inner monologue. Chris Rock shows us that only through suffering can you truly know what laughter really is. |
Everybody Hates Chris takes place in 1982 on the hard streets of Brooklyn. This semi-autobiographical account spins out Chris Rock's laughter littered childhood that is riotously funny looking back yet not quite as easy to live through the first go around. In the first scene of the pilot, we catch the family moving out of the projects to find a better life. Stepping up isn't always grand leaps as Chris' mom still buses him out of the "learning how to rob liquor stores" middle school to the white kids school. Granted, its a mob infested Italian school, but in mom's mind, white equals better education. Chris (Tyler James Williams) has a brother Drew (Tequan Richmond) and a sister Tonya (Imani Hakim), both younger. They are constant thorns in his side getting him in trouble just for kicks and stealing the attention from the fine ass girl next door.
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| I did not steal this. This is what my new show is going to win next year. |
| Everybody Hates Chris |
| Starring: Tyler James Williams, Terry Crews, Tichina Arnold, Imani Hakin & Teqan Richmond |
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Its strong characters make this show. Mom (Tichina Arnold) is great with her "100 recipes for whoopin' ass" ("I'll slap your name out of the phone book and call Ma Bell to tell her I did it"). Only mom's can show you how much they love you by yelling how many ways they could kill you. Dad (Terry Crews) is a riot, penny pinching everyone to death. When they get a happy meal at Mickey D's each kid gets one piece of the happy -- the hamburger, the fries or the Coke. He knows exactly how much the wasted food sitting in the trash costs ("49 cents of spilt milk drippin' all over this table. Somebody is gonna drink this milk"), and he's isn't going to rest until he finds out who is wasting his hard earned fractions of a dollar. Rock's running monologue perfectly fleshes out these quirky characters with lines like "Drew was so cool he got girls at 10 I couldn't get at 30." They slam into your funny bone just like we were watching a G-rated version of Rock's wickedly clever stand-up routine. Yeah, I didn't know Rock came with a G-rated filter either.
The situations that Chris continually falls into are like something out of the song "Parents Just Don't Understand." Mom won't let him wear his cool white sneakers to school instead making him wear his brother's church shoes to keep from looking "raggedy." The church shoes draw the attention of the resident bully, which absconds with his lunch money and bus pass, chunking off racial slurs during the kiddy mugging. Chris tries to "out black him," but the bully calls his bluff to find out his bark has no bite. Another scene has Chris single handedly guarding the silence of his family home to keep his father from waking up and killing the children...well at least Chris. His devices for muting the toilet and reasoning with his prissy sister are spot on for a thirteen year old. At that age, you have small mountains to climb, but at the time they are your Everest and you are going to dig into them with everything you've got.
Everybody Hates Chris is the best comedy to debut this season and should prove a huge cash cow for the UPN network. Whoever thought we'd have must-see Thursdays on the UPN? The show has a cast of fun characters that take life's simple anecdotes of childhood and recapture those inflated feelings that went along with that age. It's a shrewd and honest look that employs Rock's savage humor with subtle racial overtones that really packs a wallop. The reality of dad working two jobs to keep his family out of the projects or simply saying "I'll see you in the morning" to his son meant that he'd be around tomorrow unlike most of the dads in the neighborhood is really nice. These small touches make the entire show, and the actors know how to maximize these funny characters. If you are still watching Joey on Thursday nights, you need your head examined. Chris is where its at.
Checkout Everybody Hates Chris Thursday Nights 8 ET/PT on UPN.
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